Bioengineers produce 'Google Map' of human metabolism

A "Google Map" model of
human metabolism has been produced by an international team of
bioengineers, offering "improved predictive capability" over its
predecessor.

Recon 2 forms a community-driven expansion of the earlier Recon
1 metabolic map emerging from a number of metabolic jams. The jams
were held to focus attention on the project in order to refine the
representation and bring together biochemical information from
pre-existing models and literature. The result is a map with around
double the number of reactions and nearly double the number of
metabolites represented.

"Recon 2 allows biomedical researchers to study the human
metabolic network with more precision than was ever previously
possible," said bioengineer Bernhard Palsson of UC San Diego in a press release. "This is essential to understanding where
and how specific metabolic pathways go off track to create
disease."

Palsson likened the creation to Google's ability to bring
complex datasets together in a single interactive map. Recon 2 also
allows the user to zoom in on particular metabolic reactions or out
for groups of processes.

"It's like having the coordinates of all the cars in town, but
no street map. Without this tool, we don't know why people are
moving the way they are," said Palsson.

In terms of practical applications, similar models have allowed
biologists to increase efficiency of ethanol production and predict
drug resistance in organisms like yeast and E.coli.

According to the team, one of the main applications for the
reconstruction could be predicting how particular drugs affect
metabolic pathways associated with cancerous tumour growth as well
as conducting virtual experiments to come up with viable
treatments.

But, despite being the most comprehensive mapping available
currently, it's by no means a complete representation of human
metabolism. Indeed, Recon 2 covers just under a tenth of the
estimated 20,000 protein-coding genes in the human genome.

"Clearly, further community effort will be required to capture
chemical interactions with and between the rest of the genome,"
added Thiele.

Edited by Ian Steadman

Comments

Whilst this is an extremely interesting article, which Wired does really well, none of the links seem to go through to anything which resembles this impressive interactive map.

The only link they have on their site is a small image which isn't particularly high res.